SUN VALLEY — Some Idahoans couldn’t decide how they felt about U.S. Sen. Larry Craig two years ago, when he pleaded guilty to charges relating to a sex sting at a Minneapolis airport.

But at least one group still reveres Craig: the state’s cattle producers, who benefited from his patronage and support during his many years in Congress.

Members of the Idaho Cattle Association welcomed Craig, who did not run for re-election in last year’s election, with a standing ovation at the group’s annual conference Tuesday in Sun Valley.

Craig, who now runs a consulting firm, New West Strategies, was the day’s keynote speaker. He urged his audience to remain as involved as possible in political issues that affect them, while sharing his thoughts on the current issues under debate in Washington, D.C.

“First and foremost, you have to stay engaged,” he told association members.

Craig said launching his consulting company in a tough economy has kept him busy over the past few months, sharing a line he said he gave his wife when she asked why they were so busy in retirement.

“I said ‘No, hon, we didn’t retire. People who retire die,’” he said.

He compared leaving Congress and the nation’s capital, where his firm still has an office, to quitting smoking.

“You know that in the first three weeks to a month you have a high level of anxiety ... and then in a few months you look back and say, ‘Wow, did I have that dirty habit?’” Craig said. “That’s kind of how leaving Washington treated me.”

Speaking during a morning session devoted to environmental issues, Craig noted the decline in public-land grazing in Idaho over the past few decades and argued laws such as the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act have been interpreted much differently than they were first intended to be. That’s in part due to ranching, cattle and other Western interests not staying as involved with the process as they probably should have, he said.

But though the world has changed, now is the time to reclaim public policy from the environmentalists who’ve set it since the 1970s and ’80s, he argued. ICA members, he said, still play one key role.

“You literally are the keepers of the open range,” Craig told the crowd.

Turning to current events, Craig argued that proposed carbon cap-and-trade legislation is the next great threat to the West, and said his firm has put an organization together to work to keep it from passing the Senate. He was also concerned about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s powers regarding greenhouse gases, stating that confined-animal feeding operations have reduced methane emissions by a higher rate than other groups.

Independent voters and Americans in general are turning against President Obama’s proposals, Craig argued, with the “politics of personality” fading in favor of the “politics of policy.” If Republicans make large gains in the 2010 elections, he said, Obama may not get a second term.

It all depends on what way fiscally minded independents decide to lean.

“The pocketbook always leads the ballot,” he said.